VMware

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Revision as of 11:29, 14 March 2013 by Det(talk | contribs)(Yeah, you don't have to say that =). 1) The "Pipe unexpectedly closed" segfault is the same thing - you just don't get the segfault line unless run as root instead of sudo, 2) the auto-startup and the 'existing' check belong in the packge itself)

3.5 / 3.6 kernels

A change in the format of the kernel exception table introduced back in April affecting the vmmon module is known to cause crashes in Fedora guests. The patch here creates a portable exception table (packaged together with the script in here, which will also reload the vmmon module):

Using the modified BIOS

If and when you decide to modify the extracted BIOS you can make your virtual machine use it by moving it to ~/vmware/<Virtual machine name>:

$ mv bios440.rom ~/vmware/<Virtual machine name>/

then adding the name to the <Virtual machine name>.vmx file:

~/vmware/<Virtual machine name>/<Virtual machine name>.vmx

bios440.filename = "bios440.rom"

Copy-On-Write (CoW)

CoW comes with some advantages, but can negatively affect performance with large files that have small random writes. It is recomended to disable CoW for database files and virtual machine images. To disable CoW for the whole file system it should be mounted with the nodatacow flag. To disable CoW for single files/directories:

$ chattr +C [file/directory path]

Note: From the chattr man page: "For btrfs, the C flag should be set only on new or empty files. If set on a file which already has data blocks, it is undefined when the blocks assigned to the file will be fully stable. If set on a directory, only new files will be affected."

Using DKMS to manage the modules

The Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) can be used to manage Workstation modules and to void from re-running vmware-modconfig each time the kernel changes. The following example uses a custom Makefile to compile and install the modules through vmware-modconfig. Afterwards they are removed from the current kernel tree.

Tip: There is also a package called vmware-usbarbitratorAUR in the AUR which comes with the latest version of the vmware-USBArbitrator script as well as systemd support for automatically running the script on system startup.

2) The vmware-usbarbitrator binary is segfaulting

This could also mean that the vmware-usbarbitrator binary called in the script is segfaulting:

# vmware-usbarbitrator

Pipe unexpectedly closed.

# vmware-usbarbitrator --info -f

VTHREAD initialize main thread 2 "usbArb" pid 6426
Segmentation fault

This is caused by an empty /etc/arch-release (owned by filesystem). It is used by the service to alter its behavior based on the distribution's release version.

To fix it, add a version string in the form of <year>.<month>(.<day>) (e.g. 2013.03.01).

process XXXX: Attempt to remove filter function[...]

The full error is, for example:

process 6094: Attempt to remove filter function 0xadcc96f0 user data 0xb795aba0, but no such filter has been added
D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace
Aborted

This means that the hal daemon is not running. Install halAUR from the AUR and start the daemon with:

# hald

The installer fails to start

If you just get back to the prompt when opening the .bundle, then you probably have a deprecated or broken version of the VMware installer and you should remove it (you may also refer to the uninstallation section of this article):

# rm -r /etc/vmware-installer

Incorrect login/password when trying to access VMware remotely

VMware Workstation 9 provides the possibility to remotely manage Shared VMs through the vmware-workstation-server service. However, this will fail with the error "incorrect username/password" due to incorrect PAM configuration of the vmware-authd service. To fix it, edit /etc/pam.d/vmware-authd like this:

Issues with ALSA output

The following instructions from Bankim Bhavsar's wiki show how to manually adjust the ALSA output device in a VMware .vmx file. This might help with quality issues or with enabling proper HD audio output:

Suspend/Power off the VM.

Run aplay -L

If you are interested in playing 5.1 surround sound from the guest, look for surround51:CARD=vendor-name,DEV=num. If you are experiencing quality issues, look out for a line starting with front.

Open the <Virtual machine name>.vmx config file of the VM in a text editor, located under ~/vmware/<Virtual machine name>/, and edit the sound.fileName field, e.g.: sound.fileName="surround51:CARD=Live,DEV=0". Ensure that it also reads sound.autodetect="FALSE".

Resume/Power on the VM.

Uninstallation

To uninstall VMware you need the product name (either vmware-workstation or vmware-player). To list all the installed products:

# vmware-installer -l

and uninstall with:

# vmware-installer -u <vmware-product>

Manually included symlinks have to be removed manually in /sbin/:

# rm /sbin/insmod /sbin/lsmod /sbin/modinfo /sbin/rmmod

Remember to also remove the .service file:

# systemctl disable vmware
# rm /etc/systemd/system/vmware.service

You may also want to have a look at /usr/src/ for any leftover folders created by the (now unnecessary) step #3.7 kernels and up, containing only the file include/linux/version.h.